It is often said that a true measure of any society can be found in how well it treats its most vulnerable members. In Australia, as in many other countries internationally, aged care is a multi-billion-dollar industry, predominantly publicly funded. The quality of this care is a concern for all Australians.
A recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety placed Australia under a global spotlight, documenting systemic failures and shocking incidences of abuse and neglect of frail older people. The Covid-19 pandemic further exposed the cracks in the system and raised serious questions about the sustainability of aged care; a situation mirrored in other countries, including the UK and Canada.
This presentation will focus on the background, methods and findings from a large-scale study funded by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety to investigate the views and preferences of the Australian general public for quality of care and future funding of aged care.
Translation of key findings into aged care policy and practice in Australia will be outlined, and the implications for informing aged care policy and practice in the UK – which shares similar values, aspirations and circumstances – will be discussed.
Speaker biography
Professor Julie Ratcliffe leads the Health and Social Care Economics Group in the Caring Futures Institute, College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University, Adelaide.
Julie is the current holder of a Leadership Fellowship awarded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and she also holds an Honorary Professorial appointment in the School of Medicine and Population Health at the University of Sheffield.
Julie is an experienced health economist and an internationally recognised leader in economic evaluation and the measurement and valuation of health and quality of life outcomes to inform aged care and health system decision making.
During her career, she has been a Chief Investigator on over 60 multi-disciplinary research grants and co-authored over 300 peer-reviewed journal papers.
Julie is the inaugural health economist member of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) Council on Economic Policy and immediate Past President of the Australian Health Economics Society.
